Excerpt from 'Glaciers' by Sarah Jane Barnett

She notes down the time, opens the aquifer sample

taken from a farm west of Hastings, a saturated and fertile zone

of nested multilevel wells. She pours

it into the debubbler. The team used a direct push

drill, the cleanest way to sample intensive farming regions.

The water shines as it shunts through the tubes.

She builds a model on her computer, maps

the geology of the region, the path rain takes under

the earth, the black areas of nitrate.

It's important work. Last month they'd helped

a farmer build flow barriers, shown him how to read

the deep strata. They'd worked hard,

they'd found a way. Her phone buzzes: a text.

I'm smiling because I'll see you tonight.

She feels his breath sweet on her face.

A second text. David. Can you pick me up

early? We need to go to the pharmacy. I love you. See you soon.

She focuses on the machine,

removes the sample and starts to enter

the numbers: a red line of data works across the map.

She identifies / inhabits. She grasps. Would this

be her life's work? Her son – it was nearly time

to pick him up. She feels the pull. Each day she knows

where he will be, waiting for her

at the seashell window. He jumped out,

his tiny form crumpled forward with excitement. She can't help

but imagine him as a young man: she sees her son

on a street corner. He is eighteen. It's a few months

after he's moved out. He’s talking with a man

and a woman, hands slack in his pockets.

The day is warm. He is easy with himself,

almost languid, like a photograph

of herself in her twenties. He raises one lean arm

and lets it fall around the other young man's

shoulder. He is continuous / fluid. His laughter,

those precious drops. 

--

Edited by Sarah Jane Barnett
Photo Credit: Matt Bialostocki

'Glaciers' is a long-form poem that is part of my collection, WORK (Hue & Cry Press). The collection was launched into the world on 22 October at Vic Books, and you can find more photos of the launch on my website. 

The excerpt above is the final section of eight. The main character, a glaciologist, thinks forward to a time when her son has grown into a young man. Hinemoana Baker read part of this excerpt during her launch speech for WORK (you can hear the whole launch including the reading as a Better off Read podcast). I wanted to post it as a Tuesday Poem because 'Glaciers,' in part, is about the effort and sacrifice required by a working mother. While I'm not a glaciologist, this is my experience of being a writer and a mother. In one of the pictures above you can see my son dancing gleefully with me, Therese Lloyd and Matt Bialostocki while we're reading at the launch! 

Two interviews about WORK: 

On The Lumiere Reader: 'A Slut for Beauty: An Interview with Sarah Jane Barnett' 
On Poetry Shelf: 'Sarah Jane Barnett - writing is an act of contemplation for me'

You can find out more about WORK on the Hue and Cry Press website.

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Sarah Jane Barnett is a poet, creative writing tutor, and book reviewer. Her poetry has been published in New Zealand, Australia, and the US, and anthologised in Best New Zealand Poems, Dear Heart: 150 New Zealand Love Poems (Godwit), and Essential New Zealand Poems: Facing the Empty Page (Random House). Her debut collection A Man Runs into a Woman (Hue & Cry Press, 2012) was a finalist in the 2013 New Zealand Post Book Awards. She teaches creative writing at Massey University. She lives in Wellington, New Zealand, with her husband and son.

In addition to today's feature be sure to check out the wonderful poems featured by other Tuesday Poets, using our blog roll to the left of this posting.

The Noise by Lee Posna

a Sargasso of monologues that were all attracted to the noise

– Clive James

As the Great Pacific Garbage

Patch, gyre of voyaged plastic

Irkutsks and chemical sludge, most

fecund upper section and sunniest

of a deep pelagic cylinder

sea myriad thousand cubic miles

big with bright anchovies

is one lens on a century

so this rose window—

arabesque brass tracery

to which myriad million ultra-lived

hours added meaning-

ful shards of greens creams Algiers

Tibets sapphires of Amritsars of

garnets—is another: changed

light is the poem. 

Posted with permission from Lee Posna

Editor this week: Sarah Jane Barnett

I remember when Lee and I first started exchanging work. He sent me a link to some of his poems online. I was just about to go for a run (cap on, ear plugs in), but stopped to take a look. Half an hour later I was in tears after reading a long and incredible poem about the relationship between a son and his dead father. Lee is one of the most thoughtful and thought provoking poets I know. Behind each poem exists a depth of knowledge, which creates a genuine and strong voice. 

‘The Noise’ is the third of a series of ekphrastic poems based on the stained glass windows of an imaginary cathedral in consecration of the 20^th Century. The first two can be found here and here. I chose this poem for its keen attention to language (it has a great mouth feel) and for those killer last lines. 

~

Lee Posna grew up in New Jersey and emigrated to NZ in 2008. He’s very happy to be part of the Wellington writing community. His chapbook Arboretum is being released by Compound Press this month. 

*

Sarah Jane Barnett is a writer, tutor and book review who lives in Wellington. Her first collection of poems, A Man Runs into a Woman (Hue & Cry Press) was a finalist in the 2013 New Zealand Post Book Awards. She blogs at theredroom.org.

Early Growth by Rachel O'Neill

At her party the boy runs best with the hard-boiled egg. During
the obstacle course she meets him at the bird feeder on top of
which raisins are scattered. ‘I’m a bird,’ she nibbles and the boy
really does bob and nod. Later he says, ‘we’re twins, and I can
telepathically read the thoughts in your head,’ at which point she
makes a dent in his leg. It’s spring. Sometimes she hears an animal
cry as it comes out of its tent, or what’s it called? The uterus. It’s
taken from its mother and put on the teat. After the birthday cake
the kids run around, they bleat, skitter and find their feet. They
start to count the exposed growth rings on a tree stump, loops as
fine as hairs. One father keeps calling these the inseparable years.

Poem published with permission.
Editor: Sarah Jane Barnett 

Rachel O'Neill
Photo Credit: Kim Lesch

Rachel O’Neill is a writer, visual artist and editor based in Paekākāriki on the Kapiti Coast. Her writing has appeared in a range of publications, including Best New Zealand Poems 2011, Paper Radio, the inaugural The Long and the Short of It competition book published by Sport and Unity Books, and issues of Turbine, JAAM, and Brief. She completed a conjoint degree in English and Sculpture at the University of Auckland (2005) and a Masters in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern letters (2008). Her debut collection, One Human in Height, will be released by Hue & Cry Press this year. O'Neill also blogs at Little Disturbances.

"Early Growth" was selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2011. Of the poem, O’Neill said: ‘If my memory is correct, children's birthday parties in 1980s rural New Zealand were the kind of epic affairs that disturbed the myth that the country is not very populated. It seemed like every man, woman and child came to some of my parties. My mother put eggs on spoons and we ran as fast as we could without dropping them. There was also an unusual game that involved completing an obstacle course involving giant outdoor furniture.

In the poem there is an entanglement of child and adult point of view. It mirrors the way we humans can easily be confused by certain transitions, say from a sense of new life to experiencing more complex feelings around what new life might mean.’

What made me want to share this poem was my personal response. My son turned two in July, and the first two years of his life seem to have happened in seconds. I know; the sentiment's cliche! Still, the image of the "rings on a tree stump," which the father then calls "these the inseparable years," perfectly evokes the way childhood tumbles away. While this reading is somewhat different to the interpretation given by O'Neill, I think it speaks to, as she states, the "complex feelings" that life creates.

This week's editor Sarah Jane Barnett is a writer and reviewer who lives in Wellington. Her first collection of poems, A Man Runs into a Woman, was published by Hue & Cry Press in 2012, and has been shortlisted for best poetry collection of the year in the 2013 New Zealand Post Book Awards. She blogs at theredroom.org

When you've read Early Growth, do try some of the other Tuesday Poems out there. Check out the sidebar. 

"Pandora" by Rhydian W. Thomas

© Rhydian W. Thomas, 2011. The poem first appeared in Hue & Cry Issue No. 5, and is reproduced with permission of the author.

                                                         Editor: Sarah Jane Barnett

Ever since reading "Pandora" the poem has stayed with me. I thought it would make an interesting Tuesday Poem as it's quite unusual. For me, I can't think of another poem that has managed to create such a feeling of genuine repulsion and disgust.

In "Pandora" my repulsion comes not only from the man who abuses the dog, but from the other man who runs from the scene. The line "as his stonepath ceased to mess itself under me" and its allusion to soiling oneself, seems to capture the speaker's cowardly nature. The poem also works against the traditional lyric form and transformational moment, which I applaud. It certainly made me think about the purpose of poetry, and I still shudder with every reading.

Rhydian Thomas was born in Wales and moved to New Zealand at the age of thirteen. He is a writer and musician based in Wellington, working a range of oddball jobs to support his art-making problem. His poetry has appeared in Sport, Hue & Cry, and Turbine, and he makes music under the name The Body Lyre. He has an MA from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University and he occasionally writes for martial arts website NZFighters.com. He has won a grand total of zero Poetry Awards and zero Scholar Dollars but has been the deserving recipient of several prestigious rejection letters. He is currently working on a novel.




This week's editor Sarah Jane Barnett is a writer and reviewer who lives in Wellington. Her first collection of poems, A Man Runs into a Woman, was published by Hue & Cry Press in 2012. She blogs at theredroom.org.

After you're enjoyed the poem here at the hub, do check out the Tuesday Poets in the sidebar - each has selected a poem by themselves or another poet. 

When the Sister Walks by Sarah Jane Barnett

The trail is damp so she gathers up the hem
of her habit and scolds her own impatience

as she steps over roots as thick as a boy’s wrist. She
is not at her best. When she left he gently pressed

his tattooed palm to the glass barrier. He said,
See ya, Sister. He made a joke – See you tomorrow. 

He watched her face while she recited from her red-
edged bible. Finally, like a child, his head rested down. 

At the lake she makes towards the witness tree,

she holds aside a low-hanging hickory, the seed-nut rattle
exciting a family of yellow-back wasps. They scatter

like bright marbles, afraid or maybe angry
she cries out, Oh – oh – and stumbles

away from their hide. They are sucked into an undulating
bubble of yellow and vibrate up into the trees.

They haven’t hurt her. It is nothing

but on her knees she says, Oh God, I am thankful 
for you. She wipes a dirty finger across her cheek.


Editor: Mary McCallum

“When the Sister Walks” is one of a series of nine poems about death row executions in Texas. It appears in Sarah Jane Barnett's debut collection, A Man Runs into a Woman (Hue & Cry) which was launched on 10 August 2012 at the Michael Hirschfeld Gallery in Wellington.

The poem first appeared in issue four of Hue & Cry Journal and most recently was posted by Sarah on her blog The Red Room which is linked to Tuesday Poem [see sidebar] and can be found here. 

Another poem from the death row series was posted on Tuesday Poem recently via Helen Lowe's blog.  

The series is a fascinating one - the poems are simple and nail sharp and continue to scrape and dig and prod long after you've read them. So back you go, and there they are -- inevitable, disturbing, moving every time.

Sarah says in her own post of 'When the Sister Walks',

 In 2006 I wrote a poem in response to the hanging in the movie Capote, about the power of cinema, illusion, and self delusion. While looking for information about hanging, I found a website that had the last words and criminal reports of death row inmates. It may sound like the death row series is about execution, but that’s only true in passing. 

I wrote the poems as a way to try and understand how something like a murder, and then the subsequent execution of the convicted person, could become a normalised event for the people involved – the police, prison wardens, execution technicians, clergy, the inmates and their family, and the family of the victims. Maybe it can’t.  

I hope the poems try to reconcile, or at least interpret, the different stories told by the inmate’s last words and the police crime report. Maybe my poems are another story about the event. 

A Man Runs into a Woman can be purchased from the Hue & Cry Press store. It's an impressive collection which challenges at every turn.

Poet Paula Green says of Sarah’s work: “As the cartographer of human experience, Sarah Jane Barnett steps boldly into the shoes and lives of others – a cable television engineer, a geographer, a pipeline worker. Her alert mind and canny eye for detail translate and transform what we may have missed in the world into poetic vignettes that are both light-footed and fresh.”

Sarah Jane Barnett is a PHD student and poet and mother of a delightful small boy. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from Wellington's IIML and is currently completing a creative writing PhD after being awarded a Massey Doctoral Scholatship. Her PhD combines both creative writing and research to investigate the difficulties of nature poetry.

Check out other Tuesday Poems here on the Tuesday Poem Hub. Just look to the sidebar on the left - if a post says 'Tuesday Poem' it's worth a read.

This week's editor Mary McCallum is a Tuesday Poem co-curator. She is a Wellington poet and author who teaches creative writing, writes reviews, works in a bookshop and organises book events. Her blog is www.mary-mccallum.blogspot.com.

A Jar of Balloons or The Uncooked Rice by Matthew Yeager

Have you ever had a haircut so bad
you cried? When you open the drawer
after having poured yourself a bowl of cereal,
do you reach for a small or large
spoon? How conscious are you of your
posture? Will you agree to let a lover
use your tooth brush? Which chemicals'
smells do you like? During which phase
of life did you acquire the bulk of your
friends? Have you ever quit a bad job
emphatically, ripped off a uniform or apron,
thrown the balled-up cloth at a superior,
then stomped off? Grey or gray? Who ...


Go to Sixth Finch, Summer 2009, to read the rest of the poem.

                                                                 Editor: Sarah Jane Barnett

The reason I haven't posted the entirety of Yeager's poem is because it is long. And I don't mean long as in it has many parts, or long like a narrative poem, but long like the Great Wall of China. I was introduced to the poem by writers Ashleigh Young and Tim Upperton, who dared me to read it. So I did, in just over an hour.

Being made solely of personal questions, the poem is unrelentingly about you. It places the reader as its focus through the act of being read. Yeager's line breaks mid-question create a pace that leads into the next question. "When making a shooting- / yourself gesture, do you do the gun barrel / with two fingers or one?" he asks. "Do you insert / the finger-gun into your mouth or press it / to your temple?" When reading the questions it is hard not to think of the answer (I use two fingers and press it to my temple). Questions bounce off each other and come together to make strange suggestions. They unsettle. It's like staring into a mirror for too long. Then they keep on going.

The poem inspires many responses, the two most common, I'm guessing, are over stimulation and boredom. It has also inspired bloggers to answer Yeager's questions, which one could argue is a vain task. In saying that, Ward's Words, saw the question form of Yeager's poem as a request to the reader to answer the questions, which he did in full. It's an interesting interpretation.

So all there is to do now is read the poem. I dare you.

Reproduced on The Tuesday Poem Hub with permission.
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Sarah Jane Barnett is this week's Tuesday Poem editor. She is a writer and reviewer who lives in Wellington, New Zealand. At the moment Sarah is halfway through a PhD in Creative writing, with a focus on ecopoetics. Her first collection of poetry, A Man Runs into a Woman, is due to come out this year from Hue & Cry Press. 

Once you have enjoyed "A Jar of Balloons or The Uncooked Rice", take some time to enjoy the other poems posted this week by members of the Tuesday Poem community. You will find them all listed in the sidebar.

Rives controls the internet by Rives

                                                       Editor: Sarah Jane Barnett

Apparently the words woot, sexting and textspeak have been added to the latest edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Personally, I try to slip woot into casual conversation. It is up there with squeegee in terms of pleasurable language. It's commendable (essential!) that the Concise OED keeps up with new words, because that's the great thing about language, it changes as we do. I am sure that someone said reading old English is a form of linguistic archeology.

For my turn editing the Tuesday Poem hub I wanted to feature a poet who makes everyday, or even ugly, language beautiful. Why? My high school photography teacher once said to me that it was easy to make a beautiful image of a beautiful object, but hard to make a beautiful image of an ugly object. That conversation stuck with me, and it's been my creative philosophy ever since. This is why I've posted a poem by Rives.

So, who is this Rives guy? John G., to be precise, is an American performance poet and children's author. He is a whizz at pop-up books, has been the US National Poetry Slam champ, and holds a patent for paper engineering. I first discovered him through TED where he performed the poem, "Rives controls the internet." He also appeared at the Auckland Readers and Writers Festival this year, so some of you might have seen him.

You can find out more about Rives on his website: http://shopliftwindchimes.com/

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Sarah Jane Barnett is this week's Tuesday Poem editor and a regular contributor to the Tuesday Poem community. She is a writer and reviewer who lives in Wellington, New Zealand. At the moment Sarah is halfway through a PhD in Creative writing, with a focus on ecopoetics.

Once you have enjoyed "Rives controls the internet", take some time to enjoy the other poems posted this week by members of the Tuesday Poem community. You will find them all listed in the right-hand sidebar.

"Why We Do What We Do" by James Brown

James Brown is great live. He has had a lot of success, having published several collections of his funny, satirical and clever poetry with VUP. He has also won an armload of awards and residencies during his time. But it's when I see him read to an audience that he seems in his element.

Afterward, the crowd drifts away energised and uplifted. This may be because Brown's readings are self deprecating and funny, and it may be because he knows how to read a crowd, pausing at the right times, laughing at others. But it could also be because he seems like a normal guy. He gives other writers hope that, one day, they might be as relaxed with their own work as Brown appears at the podium.

“Why We Do What We Do” is one of my favourite James Brown poems because it gives me the same satisfaction as seeing him read. The poem is from The Year of the Bicycle (2006), a book that circles around Brown's obsession with mountain biking. It comes toward the end of the book and as part of a longer series. The poem can be read as a justification for having spent so much time writing poetry about his favourite subject. But if you flip that around, the poem can be seen as an encouragement to write about what interests you.

For this reason, “Why We Do What We Do” is the perfect poem for the Christmas post.

Since Tuesday Poem started in April this year, up to thirty Tuesday Poets have committed to posting poems weekly on their personal blogs and linking to the Tuesday Poem hub here via the live blog roll (see sidebar). The poems are written by themselves and other poets whose permission they have. As Tuesday Poem Editor, they are also rostered on to select and post poems on the hub.

The depth and breadth of the poetry selections and associated commentaries - by poets from NZ, the US, the UK, Ireland, and Australia - has been breathtaking. Also exciting is the interaction between poets and readers in the comments at the bottom of the posts. For Christmas, the Tuesday Poets have been paired as in 'Secret Santa' (when gifts are exchanged), and are posting poems or other offerings by their 'partner' poet.

We want to celebrate what interests us as writers, and our own voices. We also want to celebrate the Tuesday Poem which provides one more way to fit poetry into our lives. So check out the different blogs to see ones from our “shelf.” If “there's something / you want to hear, / you can sing it / yourself.”

Merry Christmas!


Sarah Jane Barnett is the week's Tuesday Poem editor and organiser of our 'Secret Santa'. Based in Wellington New Zealand, she is a writer, reviewer, and PhD student at Massey University exploring the prose poem. In her spare time, she makes things out of fabric and tries to live sustainably. Sarah blogs here. Why We Do What We Do is posted with permission.

The Time of the Giants by Anne Kennedy

3.

Moss picked her way

over the mosaic of strange things away from his bed and

buttoned herself out the door

while he was in the bathroom without saying goodbye.

Why? Because

goodbye seemed like an apple i.e. needing a lot of

explaining.

She walked along the street feeling new-born, stretched

to let in light.

The bark on the trees was rougher in the palms of her hands.

She carried

his weight in her backpack, his words as loose change

in her purse

his essence in a thermos for comfort and emergencies.

She noticed

she could see sideways. Cars approaching. The ghost

that she always knew

lived in the passage. I knew it. As a child rasping to bed

she'd open her eyes

as wide as possible to let in all the possible light

and the ghost in

but the moment she felt it passing (not dying, passing

as ghosts do)

she'd blink and the ghost would be gone. The others

(the living, Mum, Dad etc)

in the light of the living room as if etched on a jug

would call out

See? It was nothing, there is no ghost and look back

at the TV.

Now Moss is wide open and the ghost

is physical

you can reach out and touch it like this table this chair.

While she was out

a furniture truck came and moved her into his body.

In her room you can see

the marks on the wall where the furniture stood for so many

years. Years.

I first started reading Anne Kennedy's poetry while researching long narrative poems in New Zealand poetry. “Read Kennedy,” other writers told me so I went to the library and took out The Time of The Giants (2005), Kennedy's second collection of poetry. The Giants is a long narrative poem set over 114 pages and eighteen sections or chapters. Each chapter is itself split into sections and the resulting structure resembles of the fractal growth of a fern frond: the long form is a stem from which branches of poems grow.

The poem follows Moss, a young woman giant, who is trying to hide her substantial size from her lover Paul, a normal sized man. The poem/section above is part of chapter nine and occurs just after Moss and Paul have spent their first night together. Of the book Kennedy has written, “[it] reconfigures myth in a contemporary setting. As the descendent of Irish immigrants to Aotearoa/New Zealand, I am interested in where and how diasporas find us today.” The poem does feel like a modern day myth that is lyrical, funny, and quietly satirical of modern etiquette. It also does an excellent job of balancing the imagery and tone of a myth with a contemporary setting and voice. According to the NZ Book Council, Kennedy was once a piano teacher and a music librarian which explains her attention to sound and the alternating long / short line form that repeats its rhythm and ties the poem together. Another extract from the poem can be found here.

As well as poetry Anne Kennedy also writes fiction, autobiography and screenplays, and is the co-editor for the online journal Trout. She has collected a fair few awards such as the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award, the ICI Award and Kennedy was also the Literary Fellow at the University of Auckland. She lives in Honolulu and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawai'i.

This week's Tuesday Poem editor is Sarah Jane Barnett, a writer and reviewer living in Wellington. Sarah is currently working on a creative PhD at Massey University that looks at the way the human/nonhuman relationship is portrayed in contemporary poetry. You can check out her blog at http://theredroom.org.

For more Tuesday Poems from the rest of the Tuesday Poem community browse our live blog roll in the sidebar – if the header says ‘Tuesday poem’ you know there’s a poem in there somewhere!